We have a dubious relationship with the past. To be frank, we never actually know if history as we understand it is true or not. Because it’s always the victor, not the defeated, who writes the history. Statistically, it would appear that no recorded history is ever completely accurate. Even our memories are fully unreliable.
Science has now shown that we don’t actually remember anything about an event itself. What we remember―what our brains actually record―is our remembering. I can clap my hands twice right now and that is a fact. The first time I recall it, it is a recollection of that actual event. The sound of clapping my hands twice. But once I recall that memory a second time, according to the wiring in our brains, I’m no longer recalling the actual event itself. I’m technically recalling my last remembering of the memory of the event. My brain does not retain the original. It retains the picture I continually re-paint for myself about the event each time I recall it. And the pictures evolve over time. Pictures which still feel completely true. But can slowly alter over time.
When we retell a story with the intention of being completely truthful we feel as if we are being honest. And certainly we are not lying, because we are not purposefully speaking misleading information. It is our brains which are lying to us. We are merely telling others what our brains tell us.
I was looking at Facebook last week and saw a post about a local man named Jim Conry. Jim used to have a Volkswagen Beetle back in the 1970’s that had a big face painted on the front of it with big eyeballs and 3-D eyelids with long eyelashes. I remember the car very distinctly myself because I got to ride in it in 1976. I was 7 years old, learning how to ice skate at the Civic Center. But I was afraid to go out on the ice. Instead I clutched at the railing, afraid to let go and attempt to skate out into the middle. Mr. Conry told me that if I skated out into the middle, he would take me for a ride in his bug.
I grabbed a folding chair and, using it like a walker, I skated out onto the ice. I got my ride in the Volkswagen. But what I would have told you about the eyes on the front of the car would have been untrue. Because I can very distinctly remember that the headlights were the eyeballs. It was the headlights which had the eyelashes attached to them. I can remember for years telling that story and firmly remembering that it was the headlights which served as the car’s eyes.
But in looking at the Facebook post about that car last week, I could plainly see in the photo of it that the eyes were up the hood almost all the way to the windshield. The 3-D eyelids and lashes were there, but they were nowhere near the headlights.
But I was so sure. Until I wasn’t.
There has been a lot of news lately about our ability to successfully recall memories from the past. What is factually true in one sense may also have details either missing or misremembered. We must do our best with what we have to work with. We must give weight to things confidently remembered—especially events which have sometimes been tragically imprinted in graphic detail—while also giving latitude for elements we cannot recall. Truth is not always complete or linear.
When looking at sacred texts like the Bible, for instance, we can be assured of the document’s fallibility. There is no way that every detail happened exactly as written. We know this at least, because even the four gospels themselves tell the exact same stories in completely different ways. Different facts, different locations, sometimes even different points. So which ones, if any, are so-called “truth?” It’s interesting because ‘gospel’ is a word that is used interchangeably with ‘truth.’ We’ve all heard the term “it’s gospel truth.” But the gospels do not agree with each other except in the most basic ways. So perhaps the term gospel truth should mean something recorded with the intention of truthfulness, but also with the fallibility of human memory. In this we are perhaps being encouraged to avoid attachments with the recorded truth and be more open to what our intuition tells us.
Tomorrow is Columbus Day here in America. Regarding the so-called truth of Columbus’ “discovery” of America, we now know for certain that he was not the first to discover this continent. Besides those who were already indigenous to this land, their own ancestors having themselves discovered it thousands of years before during the last ice age, there is plenty of evidence that the Norse were here centuries before Columbus. Even the Chinese were here before him. Very likely others as well. Columbus merely made Europe aware of something already known to other parts of the world.
The kicker here though, is that Columbus’ discovery was in the name of material conquest rather than exploration; rather than trade and friendship. And so, the land was systematically taken from those already here. Further insult to injury was added in the naming of the indigenous people here as “Indians.“ In Columbus’ arrogance and ignorance, he declared that he had arrived in India. Ergo, the indigenous people here became known as Indians. To this day, there are many indigenous North Americans who still refer to themselves using this term that should be regarded as the equivalent of a racial slur.
Europeans were not the first undocumented immigrants to set foot on these shores. But the true historical memory of that moment is lost. Misremembered as discovery when in truth it was conquest. Misremembered as heroism when other, less complimentary words would be more accurate.
Since 1934, Columbus Day has been recognized as a federal holiday, but there are many states and individual communities which have chosen not to recognize it or have come up with their own way of protesting the error in our history by renaming it Indigenous People’s Day or other variations on that theme.
But have we corrected truth by doing that? Or have we laid on yet another layer of mis-remembrance? Should we celebrate indigenous people on the very anniversary of the day when they became the victims of so-called progress? What are we celebrating here exactly?
And what about us? What exists in your own history that might have been misremembered? Either favorably or not so favorably. Most things would be inconsequential, but some are bound to be things which might shift the tide of our self-worth if only we remembered it accurately. For we so often remember ourselves in a harsher light than necessary. Or worse, we avoid taking responsibility for our actions and alleviate our guilt by remembering things far too favorably.
The only real truth seems to be that we do not know the complete truth about virtually anything. As unsettling as it may seem, there is no truth out there to be told, written or expressed. The mere action of remembering is too flawed to be reliable.
But what can we do with that? Seek peace over it. Acknowledge that we and everyone are biased, flawed, revisionist historians who, even when presented with video and audio reproductions of an event, we look at them with the same biases, and then promptly misremember the details. Be okay with this. Not because mistruth is good, but because when we are not allowing or forgiving of the impossibility of truth it will accomplish nothing but resentment, stress, anxiety and emotional fatigue. Be nonresistant to the flaws and avoid attachment to truth as you expect it to be. Let it come to you. Let it rise to the surface as if it were once locked away and buried in a trunk, but now discovered and known.
I have a thought about addiction here, too. Because addiction is really a symptom of deeper issues which may or may not be remembered. Accurately or otherwise. And the terminology does not serve us well. For when someone is trying to rise above their addiction, it is called “recovery.” But re-covery literally means to just cover again. Is that what we want? Or do we wish to uncover the truth behind our addictions and compulsions?
It is the hope that if we learn as much of our truth as possible, and face it, learn from it, learn why it made us do the things we have done, we stand a better chance of balancing our history with our growth. We stand a better chance of growing and expanding upon the interconnectivity we all share. The truth beneath the illusion.
The truth is out there somewhere. We may not know it in this lifetime, but perfection does not sit waiting for us at the destination. It is in the journey toward it. Be at peace with your flaws, with your memory of history, and you will be one step closer to resisting the influence of bias and judgement. When one is at peace, they better know the difference between truth and lies. When one can look at others without judgement, we see the divine spark within and know that if nothing else we all deserve to be loved right where we are. Namasté.
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